rein_ein wrote:

Also today scored: […]
Show full quote

Also today scored:

Albatron PX845E

I love that off-white PCB it looks so retro.

Received an LS120 drive from eBay. I don't have any LS120 disks but any known working 1.44MB floppies always get reported as "not formatted". Even if I tell Windows to format them, it fails to do so. When I put the disk back in a normal floppy drive the original contents are still intact. It makes all the noises that I'd presume are normal, but it's apparently not managing to actually read or write anything to the disk.
It seems like maybe this could be a simple fault electrically, but I have no idea how to service floppy drives.

Disappointing, but I'll get another one. The internet tells me these drives aren't as robust as traditional floppy drives and have a tendency to turn up dead, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Try to get a Panasonic/Matsushita drive rather than a Mitsubishi. I have both and the former are much faster.

Not something as daft as a dodgy cable, is it?

shamino wrote:

Received an LS120 drive from eBay. I don't have any LS120 disks but any known working 1.44MB floppies always get reported as "not formatted". Even if I tell Windows to format them, it fails to do so. When I put the disk back in a normal floppy drive the original contents are still intact. It makes all the noises that I'd presume are normal, but it's apparently not managing to actually read or write anything to the disk.
It seems like maybe this could be a simple fault electrically, but I have no idea how to service floppy drives.

Disappointing, but I'll get another one. The internet tells me these drives aren't as robust as traditional floppy drives and have a tendency to turn up dead, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

With windows 7, formatting the disk doesn't work. windows will format it as it would a usb drive. this is unreadable by other floppy drives. My work around was to boot up dos in a virtual machine and format it from there. I just told the host to pass through a: to the ls-120 and it works.

Received today a Matrox Parhelia P650 PCI complete with LFH60 cable (OMG that cable is huge, it's about 3 times bigger than the card itself).

Also a Geforce3 Ti500. The fan on this one is busted, won't spin even manually, it's completely jammed. The card works, but has some artifacts (I tested it just briefly with another fan held in front of it, just to see if it works at all). Oh boy.

Fortunately I have a few heatsinks+fans for this type of card on the way from China - ordered a couple of weeks ago because I needed to fix a similar problem on a Geforce2 GTS which uses the same style of HSF. I'm actually hoping to replace just the fan itself, because the heatsink is color-coordinated with the RAM heatsinks. 😀 Hopefully this will restore the card to functioning, and the GPU and/or memory weren't damaged by the previous owner by running with the fan off.

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today.

Are you ready for some epic packing photos...

Notice the cling film covering the CPU, not sure why. It was at the bottom of the box with the headsink & fan! Three bent pins I had to straighten out. Processor does work though.

Upon the previous owner removing the headsink, instead of spending 30 seconds removing the thermal paste - he just left it on. The box, processor and packing was caked in it... oh and now my hands as well 🤣

foey wrote:

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today. […]
Show full quote

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today.

Are you ready for some epic packing photos...

Notice the cling film covering the CPU, not sure why. It was at the bottom of the box with the headsink & fan! Three bent pins I had to straighten out. Processor does work though.

Upon the previous owner removing the headsink, instead of spending 30 seconds removing the thermal paste - he just left it on. The box, processor and packing was caked in it... oh and now my hands as well 🤣

I'm dying to know what you left as the feedback, 🤣.

Well, I broke down and bought more stuff (even though I promised myself I won't spend any more on my retro build - promise long been broken).

After the craptastic experience with the SB16 card (also an ebay buy)...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/361651079513

...I got two of these (cheap as chips, so why not) with the advice of Phil and the others here):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/191717087488

Also had to have a set of speakers to look the retro part, so I bought these (surprisingly new in box):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/331507589542

Then I just spiraled down the Roland SC-55 route. I figured it's just nice to have in the collection:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/182239065033
http://www.ebay.com/itm/282134641242
http://www.ebay.com/itm/232018972278
http://www.ebay.com/itm/310939859832

I might have to look into a Pentium build for a straight up DOS PC with one of the Yamaha sound card and the Roland. Will also be my MIDI jukebox. 😀

Purchase a number of disc at a few shops today each for a 1$ a pop. Some windows software, some games, and some drivers. I think the most interesting one is the corel we.designer which only requires a 486dx cpu. Some evga and motherboard drivers.

Anyone know if any of these need to/should be archived?

http://imgur.com/a/o9ZiP

GuyTechie wrote:

I'm dying to know what you left as the feedback, lol. […]
Show full quote

foey wrote:

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today. […]
Show full quote

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today.

Are you ready for some epic packing photos...

Notice the cling film covering the CPU, not sure why. It was at the bottom of the box with the headsink & fan! Three bent pins I had to straighten out. Processor does work though.

Upon the previous owner removing the headsink, instead of spending 30 seconds removing the thermal paste - he just left it on. The box, processor and packing was caked in it... oh and now my hands as well 🤣

I'm dying to know what you left as the feedback, 🤣.

Well, I broke down and bought more stuff (even though I promised myself I won't spend any more on my retro build - promise long been broken).

After the craptastic experience with the SB16 card (also an ebay buy)...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/361651079513

...I got two of these (cheap as chips, so why not) with the advice of Phil and the others here):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/191717087488

Also had to have a set of speakers to look the retro part, so I bought these (surprisingly new in box):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/331507589542

Then I just spiraled down the Roland SC-55 route. I figured it's just nice to have in the collection:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/182239065033
http://www.ebay.com/itm/282134641242
http://www.ebay.com/itm/232018972278
http://www.ebay.com/itm/310939859832

I might have to look into a Pentium build for a straight up DOS PC with one of the Yamaha sound card and the Roland. Will also be my MIDI jukebox. 😀

I recommend cracking open that USB-MIDI interface in short order after it arrives (test it first). There may be parts you need to replace.

gdjacobs wrote:

GuyTechie wrote:

I'm dying to know what you left as the feedback, lol. […]
Show full quote

foey wrote:

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today. […]
Show full quote

I received a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ & A Cooler Master Aero 7 Heatsink fan today.

Are you ready for some epic packing photos...

Notice the cling film covering the CPU, not sure why. It was at the bottom of the box with the headsink & fan! Three bent pins I had to straighten out. Processor does work though.

Upon the previous owner removing the headsink, instead of spending 30 seconds removing the thermal paste - he just left it on. The box, processor and packing was caked in it... oh and now my hands as well 🤣

I'm dying to know what you left as the feedback, 🤣.

Well, I broke down and bought more stuff (even though I promised myself I won't spend any more on my retro build - promise long been broken).

After the craptastic experience with the SB16 card (also an ebay buy)...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/361651079513

...I got two of these (cheap as chips, so why not) with the advice of Phil and the others here):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/191717087488

Also had to have a set of speakers to look the retro part, so I bought these (surprisingly new in box):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/331507589542

Then I just spiraled down the Roland SC-55 route. I figured it's just nice to have in the collection:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/182239065033
http://www.ebay.com/itm/282134641242
http://www.ebay.com/itm/232018972278
http://www.ebay.com/itm/310939859832

I might have to look into a Pentium build for a straight up DOS PC with one of the Yamaha sound card and the Roland. Will also be my MIDI jukebox. 😀

I recommend cracking open that USB-MIDI interface in short order after it arrives (test it first). There may be parts you need to replace.

Can you elaborate?

GuyTechie wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

I recommend cracking open that USB-MIDI interface in short order after it arrives (test it first). There may be parts you need to replace.

Can you elaborate?

I've mentioned this before, elsewhere.
http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-mi … ay-be-required/

Beware the cost-down process.

dondiego wrote:

Recently i bought a couple of socket 478 boards for 1€ each. Unlike i stated earlier the ecs p4vxasd2+ has an universal agp slot […]
Show full quote

Recently i bought a couple of socket 478 boards for 1€ each. Unlike i stated earlier the ecs p4vxasd2+ has an universal agp slot, the other one is a matsonic ms-9147c which is a clone board. These are counterfeit boards with a fake chipset, i already suspected that since they support sdr ram. According to the manual they feature the via p4x333 but the chipset actually is the p4x266 so no 533 mhz bus support and no ddr 333 ram either. The pci and agp are actually overclocked when you set the bus to 133 that's why the boards didn't boot with the savage 3d, now i've tested an ati rage pro and works fine at 400 mhz fsb. Both boards actually were unstable at 533 fsb when tested with the geforce2 mx and a pentium 4 2.4 ghz but at least they booted.
(there's a cardboard box below the mobo in the picture)

Nice find with getting that board as it is a bit rare these days but that chip set is 3DFX safe. Got two of them myself and figured out that one can mount a much better cooler. Zalman cnps 7000 using the socket A mounting kit (though hole) but only one end of each of the two piece bracket will thread a screw as the two hole are off by just two or three mm but still sturdy enough to be safe.

bjt wrote:

Try to get a Panasonic/Matsushita drive rather than a Mitsubishi. I have both and the former are much faster.

Lukeno94 wrote:

Not something as daft as a dodgy cable, is it?

luckybob wrote:

With windows 7, formatting the disk doesn't work. windows will format it as it would a usb drive. this is unreadable by other floppy drives. My work around was to boot up dos in a virtual machine and format it from there. I just told the host to pass through a: to the ls-120 and it works.

Thanks for the suggestions - I posted a separate thread for the LS-120 situation here:
Looking for confirmation - is my LS120 drive faulty?

gdjacobs wrote:

I've mentioned this before, elsewhere. http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-mi … ay-be-required/ […]
Show full quote

GuyTechie wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

I recommend cracking open that USB-MIDI interface in short order after it arrives (test it first). There may be parts you need to replace.

Can you elaborate?

I've mentioned this before, elsewhere.
http://www.arvydas.co.uk/2013/07/cheap-usb-mi … ay-be-required/

Beware the cost-down process.

Thanks for the heads up.

This hobby is starting to infuriate me...

Got a lot of 4 VLB VGA cards for my new 486 (which currently has a ISA CL-GD5424 in it)

The seller was light on details, didn't know exactly what the cards were.

Two identical S3 cards, not sure about model numbers or anything else:

Then two different Cirrus Logic cards:

Looking forward to trying these out and benchmarking them to find the ideal one for my system. Can anyone identify the make/model of any of these cards? Seller said one or more of the cards possibly are 2 MB cards but was not sure. Can any of y'all tell from the pictures? Also, what's with the 25-pin D-sub connector on the lower Cirrus card? 😕

S3 ones are 805 1MB. Upper Cirrus Logic is missing BIOS chip. Bottom one is I/O + VGA combo. Models can't be seen but I'd guess 5426 or 5428. All are 1MB.

kixs wrote:

S3 ones are 805 1MB. Upper Cirrus Logic is missing BIOS chip. Bottom one is I/O + VGA combo. Models can't be seen but I'd guess 5426 or 5428. All are 1MB.

Thanks for the quick and knowledgeable reply! 😎

I feel like if I squint the lower CL chip reads 5430, but I'm not sure.

Combined I/O and VGA, that's cool! That means I can replace my ISA I/O card, too!

Would the S3 cards be faster than the CL cards?

Everything is faster than CL cards. S3 was pretty much the top of the pile. Only real competition was tseng.

Picked up a NIB Boca IO 2 by 4

and NIB 384k memory expansion board

Not sure if the serial/parallel port has a terrible 8250 uart, or if the parallel ports are even bi-directional, but it was unusual enough that I grabbed it anyway. The photos are pretty crappy but i THINK the chip number starts with ST16C, which makes me optimistic.